


and it was good

by prosodiical



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aziraphale and Crowley are Adam Young's Parents (Good Omens), Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-14 05:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20595782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: Crowley kidnaps the Antichrist. Now he and Aziraphale have to step up to the job of raising him."Don't think you've excused yourself from your duty of care to this child. I don't even know how to raise a baby."Crowley didn't know, either. "Eh," he said, "humans do it all the time, have for ages. How hard can it be?"





	and it was good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GriffinHeart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GriffinHeart/gifts).

"Adam Fell? Bit on the nose, isn't it?"

Aziraphale frowned, looking up from the books he was coaxing into a bookshelf that only looked too small to fit them in to Crowley, leafing through the recently miracled paperwork on his desk. "You were the one who didn't want him to take your name," he said. "Though I do agree it does seem a rather inauspicious start to this whole child-rearing business..."

"Actually," Crowley said quickly, "I'm sure it's fine. Suitably ironic. Not suspicious at all."

Aziraphale gave him a look. It was pointed enough it could have contained a thousand words, but it just said: _really, my dear,_ as did Aziraphale's mouth when he opened it. "Really, my dear. If you'd prefer he be Adam Crowley - "

Crowley shivered, mostly out of an emotion he would prefer to call 'profound discomfort', however many similarities it had to 'fear'. "Fell is fine," he said, and resumed his pacing, sparing a glance over to the basket sitting on Aziraphale's chaise. "Whoever heard of the name making the Antichrist? He's got an angel on his side, there's no bloody chance he'll - well. And there's always Plan A..."

Plan A had not worked out. Crowley had not entirely expected it to; out of all the angels in the universe, Aziraphale was at the bottom of the list of those who would jump straight to child murder to prevent the end of the world. There would be many other angels at the same position, but Crowley would rank them slightly higher simply because while Aziraphale had qualms about child murder, the other angels only had qualms about preventing the end of the world.

Of course, all the demons Crowley knew would have qualms about both, mainly because the child was the son of Satan, it was his plan for the end of the world, and for all that he'd made a big show of disobedience the first time 'round he didn't seem to appreciate it much in his subordinates. Even Crowley had had qualms while driving over with the baby he'd hastily re-swapped back into the basket in the backseat.

There was a reason why Crowley was here in Aziraphale's bookshop.

"I can't kill a baby, Crowley," Aziraphale said, not for the first time. "I'm sure that between the two of us, he'll have a balanced enough education to, to see some sense when the whole End of Times comes about - "

"Wait." Crowley spun around, sunglasses slipping down his nose. "The two of us?"

Aziraphale's eyes narrowed. Usually his irritation with Crowley ranged from a mild _can't you see I'm working here?_ to a disgruntled _don't think I didn't see you nearly hit that pedestrian._ For the first time in Crowley's recent memory, his expression hit the level of 'quite peeved'. "You can't mean that you want me to raise the Antichrist alone."

"Well," Crowley said, dithering, because he had meant that, at least until Aziraphale had confronted him about it, "I'm a busy demon! I can't be going around raising Antichrists all the time. I have to be tempting the masses into sin and keeping an eye on the other kid, the one I was supposed to swap out for this one, remember? And what if Downstairs finds out? This isn't worth a demotion, angel, this is…"

Crowley didn't finish his sentence. After the whole mess with the Holy Water thermos he kept in a secure safe in his apartment, he didn't think he needed to.

"And what about my superiors?" Aziraphale asked, with a brief and rather paranoid glance at the ceiling. "Unless you're planning on taking over my job as well - I do have to be seen doing something."

"You can't pass it off as…?" Crowley waved a hand vaguely skyward.

"I doubt it," Aziraphale said. "Gabriel stopped by today, actually. He had… things to say. About the Great Plan." He stopped re-shelving, books hovering in mid-air. Crowley forcefully expected them to stay that way when they briefly wobbled like Aziraphale's voice. "Oh, Crowley, should we really be doing this? Perhaps we could give him to some nice English couple in the countryside, or even back to those odd Americans, and just pop in on occasion to check on him - "

"It wouldn't end up being 'on occasion', you know that," Crowley said, impatiently. "They already want me to keep an eye on him. And if you're there coaxing him into piety or thwarting me or whatever, who knows how much they'll expect of me. And what'll a nice English couple do when their Antichrist starts compelling them into things?"

Aziraphale's mouth pursed, and he followed Crowley's gaze to the basket. "Yes," he said, with an unnecessary and tired sigh, "I suppose this isn't something one can leave to mere chance."

"Buck up," Crowley said, not entirely unsympathetically, "nature vs nurture, eh? This lot have won us over, who else stands a chance?"

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows, but turned back to the last pile of his books that he'd moved out from his upstairs flat. Crowley manfully resisted the urge to look too triumphant even as Aziraphale said mildly, "You realise it has been six thousand years."

"Mm," Crowley said, "and how long did you have that flaming sword for, again?"

"Oh, do be quiet, thank you," Aziraphale said, cheeks flushing pink, and Crowley grinned. He stopped very soon after as Aziraphale apparently sensed it and said without looking back, "And don't think you've excused yourself from your duty of care to this child. I don't even know how to raise a baby."

Crowley didn't know, either. "Eh," he said, "humans do it all the time, have for ages. How hard can it be?"

The problem, of course, was this: for all that Aziraphale and Crowley played at humanity, for all that they'd 'gone native' relative to their respective sides, they weren't very good at being innocuous in the long-term. Crowley might have slept every night but he didn't derive Aziraphale's enjoyment from food or tea, and while Aziraphale liked to be tempted into at least a meal a day he had little patience for sleep and didn't even own a bed.

Meanwhile, the mostly-human Antichrist child needed regular food, and sleep, and a dozen other things besides.

Aziraphale ruled out creating everything via miracles. "He'll need some real clothes eventually," he said, fussily cradling the baby in his arms as Crowley drove with no additional respect for human rules like speed limits, "so it's best to start now. Establish good habits."

He sounded like he'd absorbed a dozen parenting books in the night and was regurgitating them whole. Suspiciously, Crowley asked, "Is that a quote?"

Aziraphale frowned. "If you expect me to try and raise a child without even accessing _resources_ \- "

"No, no," Crowley said, quickly. "Just. I'm surprised, is all."

"Surprised?"

"Well, you know."

"No, not really." Aziraphale was starting to look fairly miffed. Crowley searched for something that wouldn't bring the full force of an angelic hissy-fit on his head.

"Didn't really... seem like your area?" he hazarded. "For the shop. Collecting. Thought you stuck to literature."

"My tastes span much wider than that," Aziraphale said, slightly mollified. "Though I suppose you hardly read enough to know - "

"Ouch," Crowley mumbled, though he had indeed cultivated that impression with Aziraphale in particular.

" - I do have a few. I admit they may be somewhat out-of-date but, I would say, in the essentials human child-rearing is much the same as it ever was, wouldn't you agree?"

"'spose," said Crowley, who had no real opinions on child-rearing unless it was done terribly, which was, for a demon, fairly easy to spot. "More, er, helicopter parenting nowadays. Anti-vaxxers." They hadn't been one of his, but he'd taken credit regardless. He'd gotten a commendation for coercing Pestilence back from retirement. "Commercialism."

Aziraphale tutted. "Surely it can't be that bad."

The Bentley pulled to a stop in front of a furniture store that promised to have all anyone needed for a nursery. Next would be clothing, and toys, and the Hellish experience of new parents confronting the thousands of mass-produced so-called 'essentials' for childcare. 

Crowley knew. Aziraphale would find out, and probably ask him if he had a hand in it.

(This time, he didn't, but he was thinking of writing it up.)

The baby started crying as they got out of the car. Aziraphale patted its back and made soothing noises, giving a distrustful look to Crowley over its head.

"C'mon, angel," Crowley said, gesturing. "You want stuff? Here's stuff."

"I want," Aziraphale said, primly, "for you to hold Adam for the moment. One bottle of formula I can excuse, but my miracle report - "

He'd widened his eyes, giving Crowley that flutter of his eyelashes that he must have known always did Crowley in. Crowley pretended to resist for a fraction of a moment before he sighed. "Fine," he said, "give it here."

"_His_ name is Adam," Aziraphale said, as he passed the baby over. Crowley realised, somewhat belatedly, that this was the first time he had held it. He looked down at it, its squashed cherubic face, its wispy blond curls, its tiny clenched hands and feet. It stared up at him with large blue eyes, crying stopped in surprise.

It was tiny. Crowley felt a throb in his chest that immediately condensed into panic. "Aziraphale," he said, "this is a baby."

"Yes," said Aziraphale, unhelpfully.

"Aziraphale," Crowley repeated, as if Aziraphale might understand him better a second time, "this is a baby. That we're responsible for."

"Yes," Aziraphale said. His voice had gentled. "That is what we decided on, last night."

It seemed a decade ago. Had Crowley really woken up yesterday morning, baby-free, thinking of causing a bit of mischief and debating dropping by the bookshop to tempt Aziraphale to dinner and drinks? Had Crowley really thought that passing off the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, etc., to an angel, to try and raise him into a decent human-shaped being, was actually going to prevent the end of the world? It seemed like a fantasy. Aziraphale's hand landed on his elbow, an anchor in a storm, and Crowley looked at him. "What are we doing, angel?"

"We're buying a crib for my flat," said Aziraphale, "and clothing, and food, and anything else he might need or want, and then we're going back to the bookshop and setting up a nursery upstairs."

"I don't mean that," said Crowley, and looked down. The baby's surprise had waned, and now its face was screwing up in anticipation of a good, long cry. Crowley miracled up a bottle and the baby was pre-empted back into surprise as it started sucking on the teat. "I mean…"

He looked back up at Aziraphale. Aziraphale's eyes were soft. "We're adopting a little boy," he said. "So that maybe, when he turns eleven, he'll have fallen in love with this world as much as we have."

The look on Aziraphale's face was almost too much. Crowley cleared his throat and looked down at Adam. Adam looked back, seemingly quite pleased with himself as he drank down the bottle. 

"Well," Crowley said, and looked back up at Aziraphale. "We'd better get on with it, then."

"Let's get a wiggle-on," Aziraphale agreed, starting off, and Crowley groaned as he hurried after him.

"No! No, you're not letting Adam learn your, your stupid slang that's a century out of date, he'll be bullied to Hell and back and I mean that literally - "

"Oh, and I suppose you're going to stop me?"

"Yes," Crowley said, "yes, if I have to, you absolute bastard. Ugh, babies." Adam attempted to spit up on him when he burped, but Crowley's jacket was having none of it and it disappeared before it could land. He held Adam out. "Here. Switch."

Aziraphale took Adam back, the baby settling naturally into his arms as they entered the store. A shop attendant smiled at them, and Crowley grabbed Aziraphale's arm before he could draw her into conversation in the pursuit of assistance that would end up taking hours; they had a lot of shops to get through today, after all.

Aziraphale turned his smile back on him, devastatingly angelic. Crowley's chest clenched, and he tried to pretend it was nausea.

This could work out, he realised. They could do this.

"Hey," he said to Adam, when he took him back. He said it quietly, so Aziraphale, deep in negotiations on furniture colour and delivery, wouldn't be disturbed. "You hear that? You better shape up, kid. We won't have you destroying the world."

Adam burbled up at him, as innocent as Abel. As innocent as Cain. Time would tell. Only the future - and the Almighty Herself - could know.

**Author's Note:**

> This was super fun to write - I hope you like it!


End file.
